Up until she saw him on the decaying moss covered bench – she had never seen a man so close.

They sometimes saw them in passing train cars

Or an engineer observing isolated tracks from the distance

Together they laughed at their simian gait and facial hair.

Speaking cautiously about their appendages. That odd elongated mushroom and the inevitable terror and destruction it brought.

We laughed but knew the consequences. Choosing to remain in our hidden forest sanctuaries.

I first met monsieur Paul by chance. Chantal, my pet red fox and I were mindlessly playing hide and seek when we heard his cough. And soft tears.

Chantal hid in the brush but I was genuinely curious.

The elders always warned but he seemed harmless enough. Certainly not threatening. And so very sad.

Whimpering, he repeated a name. “Tami.”  Or that was what I assumed. So I drew closer.

He heard my rustling of leaves, slowly turned, but seemingly unconcerned, buried his head in his hands and wept with torturous vigor.

Although we were taught that pain did indeed exist, it was still a foreign concept to my forest family. Joy was all we had ever truly experienced throughout our phallus free society of sorts.

Perhaps there lived an exception.

I stood before him and introduced myself, with a nod to Chantal still cowering in the brush.

I expected a more abrupt or startled response, yet he appeared more content to embrace his tearful muttered calls to Tami.

I calmly told him he shouldn’t be here in the forest but I would allow him a few more minutes to clear his head before asking him politely to leave. Forever.

He finally looked up, rubbed his eyes on his dirty sweater sleeve, and studied my face. And that too seemed like forever. As I studied the lines in his face, the stubbles of hair on his face, his protruding paunch and navel creeping out from above his waistline.

And me, like all of us; naked and luminescent. That was the word he had used. Once we got to know one another.

But in that very moment he was quietly mesmerized. Not like the leches we were schooled existed in such great numbers in Paul’s world. More like a scientist. Or artist which I soon learned was his craft.

“I’m Paul, Paul Delvaux, and I apologize if I have trespassed or offended you in any way as it was not my intention.”

He spoke of his sadness, his love, his family, and his loss. Monsieur Delvaux then became very quiet. He told me he would leave and never speak of our meeting or his discovery as he wanted no one to know of his discovery and our secret. But he did ask if he would be allowed to return and perhaps paint the splendor of our forest. He hesitated, then also politely queried if he too could paint my family he imagined were all luminescent, and filled with the joy, beauty, and mystery he found in me.

Sadly, I denied his request recognizing the full brevity of what his discovery could bring to our community. However genuine his intentions and soul, we were destined to be phallus free as the implications of destruction, greed, assault, and even death were far too costly to our harmonious vulvatious society.

Monsieur Delvaux understood. If meeting me was all there was then that would need to be sufficient. He got up from his bench and quietly looked at me for what seemed like eternity. I felt he was committing my image to his mind and sensed I would somehow manifest in his creative pursuits for the remainder of his lifetime. I was honored yet also saddened by the knowledge we would never meet again. And that I would not know his precious Tami and truly why her memory brought him so much pain and sadness.

The elders are worried and psychically concerned. They sense I have crossed a threshold into the darkness that only the men can inhabit. And I still carry the weight of my secret and the sadness that fills me.  Much like Tami and Monsieur Delvaux.